Best Friends Forever
by Lizzy Lovegood
Summary: The Doctor and Donna Noble: best mates, equals, and the type of people who do not wear friendship bracelets. At least until Donna buys a pair. Discussions of metaphors and similes, ensembles, and birthday favors ensue. Slightly cracky friendship fic.


**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who belongs to the brilliant Russell T. Davies. I am just playing with his characters.

**A/N: **So I lied. Rather than working on **Domestics**, I've been writing (and re-writing and re-writing) this for the past few weeks. I am still not entirely happy with it but hope you enjoy. :)

A quick warning for anyone sensitive to angst: If you'd prefer this to have a happy ending, just stop at _Allons-y Donna Noble _and pretend the last few paragraphs don't exist.

_Allons-y!_

**. . .**

**Best Friends Forever**

"You must be mad," says Lief, "if you think I'm parting with this for less than a hundred fifty, mate." He pats the gravitational stabilizer that his customer is eying so avidly. "Prime piece of craftsmanship, this is."

"Oh, it's hardly worth that." The man arches a skeptical brow, long fingers dancing across the merchandise, inspecting it for dings and rust. "Looks thirty-first century at least."

Lief clutches a hand to his chest. "You wound me, sir! Honestly – _honestly –_ cost me triple what I'm tellin' you just to get it for myself. And I'm not talking just money, neither." He points to his nose, which sits lopsided on his pockmarked face. "And all so's that I could offer it to hardworking gentlemen such as yourself."

"A hundred thirty," the man retorts. "It's the best you'll. . . ."

"Oi! Spaceman!"

Lief starts at the sound, not from the sheer volume of the cry – in his profession, shouting is the preferred form of communication – but at the primitive term. _Spaceman_ . It was a word his great-grandmother used, eyes wide with childish wonder, as though the ability to travel from world to world were only one reserved for her sci-fi shows. Nevertheless, the man in front of him glances up, scanning the crowd for the catalyst of the antiquated term.

"What?" he shouts back.

"Get over here!" the voice replies. Craning his neck, Lief is surprised to spot, not a wrinkled old biddy, but a young woman with a fiery head of red hair and, judging from the volume of her voice, a matching temper.

Sliding her sunglasses off and shielding her eyes against the sun, the woman waves frantically in their direction. "You can see me, right? You can see me?"

"Yes, I can see you!" The man – _Spaceman_? – rolls his eyes and Lief covers his snort of laughter with a cough. "Just stop before you take someone's eye out!"

"Then get your skinny arse _over _here!"

Spaceman raises a hand, turning back to Lief, who grins broadly. If the guy's willing to risk spending the night on the couch, this is a surefire sale.

"One forty-five," Lief counters, crossing his arms across his chest. "And that's being generous. Man's gotta make a living somehow. Sure you understand."

"One-forty." It is the only reply he receives and Lief frowns.

"Come on, mate, I've got three kids at home. With that and the missus . . . well, you know how it is." Best to establish a rapport with the customer, his father had taught him, even if that rapport was constructed entirely of lies.

"What?"

"Doctor!" Brandishing a pair of sharp elbows, the redhead joins them at the counter. "When I said _get over here_, not _when you get around to it_!"

Doctor sighs, deep and dramatic, and Lief's lips twitch. _This _is why he isn't married.

"Just – just hang on a sec. . . ."

"No, not _hang on a sec_! I know what that means with you, Mr. Time-is-Relative. _Now_!"

"Donna. . . ."

"This is _important_, you Martian!"

"Not from Mars," the Martian mutters. Then, to the woman – Donna, "_What _is so important?"

Donna plants her hands on her hips, mirroring his exasperated sigh with one of her own. "_What _is so important? That schmuck," she gestures back over her shoulder, toward the stall she's recently vacated, "is trying to cheat me. _That's _what's so important!"

Again, Lief cranes his neck, only to see the object of their conversation – a part-humanoid he has met a few times in passing – doing the exact same thing. His six eyes are round with fear.

"Just buying more junk, are you?"

It is a complaint Lief has heard many a time – from nagging wives more often than not – and one he has ignored just as many. A man has to make a living somehow, and if he listened to half the old broods nagging at their henpecked husbands, he would have been living on the street long ago. Nevertheless, Lief finds himself releasing his hold on the stabilizer, clearing his throat as he pushes it across the counter, straight into the middle of the marital squabble.

"You know what, mate? Hundred-forty sounds fine. Wouldn't want your missus to think I've been cheating you or nothing." Recalling another nugget of fatherly wisdom, he flashes a charming smile at Donna. Self-preservation was more important than a sale any day of the week (unless you were certain you could sleep with her), and instinct told hm this was not a woman he wanted to tangle with in any way, shape, or form.

Spaceman/Doctor/Martian freezes, credit stick half-extended; there is something approaching alarm in his eyes.

"She's not . . . she's not my -" the man's Adam's apple bobs up and down and he sputters before gasping out the end of his sentence on an exhale of disbelief - "my _missus_."

"His _what_?" Donna demands. "Hang on- You think I'm his _wife_?"

"Didn't mean to assume, ma'am." Lief's hand trembles as he raises it to his chest again, as though to fend off her oncoming fury. "I got no problem keeping things casual."

Another choked noise from the mysterious man, his eyes flitting back-and-forth between Lief and his mistress.

"_Casual?_ What's that supposed to mean – _casual_? Just because I'm nagging at this idiot, you think we have to be – _ugh_!"

"No – no, ma'am. Of course not, that wasn't what I-"

"'Cause I'm nagging _you _right now. D'you think I'm just about to – to _dance _with you, then?"

"No. . . ."

"You're a bloody sexist, that's what you are! This _is _the thirty-fifth century, isn't it? No, don't answer that, you stupid. I thought you lot were supposed to be _enlightened_."

"We – we are." The protest bursts out of Lief, unbidden, and he regrets it a moment after.

"You _are_?" She snorts again, tossing her hair. "So you treat all ladies like this, do ya? Shag my friend or you, is that it? The bloody _nerve_. . . ." Turning on her heel, she storms off. Lief watches her go, the weight on his chest easing the further away she draws.

Clearing his throat, Lief turns back to Pretty Boy – the most accurate nomenclature yet, he has to admit – and, before he can allow himself to regret what he's about to do, to think about all the nights at the pub this will cost him, places the stabilizer into the mysterious man's open palm.

"Just take it, mate," he whispers, glancing around for spectators. It won't do to have folks knowing that Lief is becoming charitable. "Just don't – well, don't let word get 'round. Man's gotta make a living, don't he?"

**. . .**

In a few long strides, the Doctor has caught up to Donna. Tossing the stabilizer nonchalantly into the air with one hand, he stuffs the other into his pocket.

"You got it, then," she says.

"Yep," he replies, popping the _p_.

"You planned me to," he says.

"Yep." She pops the _p _right back.

"Any particular reason why?"

Donna shrugs, tugging her purse higher up onto her shoulder. "He was cheating you. I may not have a clue what that thing is, but it looks old enough to be your ship's great-aunt."

"I was dealing with it."

"Oh, please. When you're not doing that _Oncoming Storm _nonsense, you're about as threatening as a – as a. . . ."

"Can't think of any metaphors, can we?" The Doctor puffs out his chest. "Well, that's no surprise, I _am _rather. . . ."

". . . as a skinny boy in a suit!" she finishes triumphantly. "And that would be a simile, you dumbo."

"Oi!"

"Plus, he was a sexist bastard. As if I'd even consider. . . ." She gestures vaguely in the Doctor's direction, lower lip curled in distaste.

"I'd like to repeat, Donna – I _am _the one piloting you around the galaxy."

"Doesn't mean I have to fancy you, does it? You're the one who said you only wanted a mate."

"Yeah, of course. 'Course I did. _Do_. 'Course I do. That's what we are, right? Mates?"

Donna smiles up at him, a rare, tender look in her eyes. "Best mates." He grins back and wiggles his fingers, encouraging her to take them, but she grasps his wrist instead, tugging him toward another booth where a multi-eyed vendor watches them warily. "This way."

"What?" The Doctor skids to a stop, eyes darting suspiciously around the marketplace. "What are you doing? Hang on. . . ."

"Told you I was cheated, didn't I? We have to go sort it out."

"We? What do you need me for?" the Doctor asks, voice dangerously close to a whine.

"Because I do."

"But _Donna_, you already told me I was useless at that stuff."

"Don't even _try_ pouting on me, Time Lord. I got you that – that _thing_, didn't I?"

"I didn't ask you to. . . ."

"It's not about money, anyway," Donna continues, undeterred, "it's – oh, _come on _already."

Grumbling, the Doctor still allows her to pull him forward. He smiles slightly when the shopkeeper's eyes flick away at their approach, studying the wares laid out across the tabletop – costume jewelry mostly, their artificial settings sparkling in the sunlight – only turning to face them when Donna raps sharply on the wood.

"Told you so, didn't I?"

"Miss, I never-"

"Thought you could just scare away the stupid tourist, did you? Well, here he is," she points over her shoulder again, at the Doctor this time, "so go ahead and do your alien thing."

"Sorry," the Doctor steps forward, raising a hand in a friendly wave, "but alien _thing_?" He swivels to face the shopkeeper. "I'm the Doctor by the way and this is my companion, Donna Noble."

"Companion?" echoes the shopkeeper. "You are . . . associates, then?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Oh, don't you go trying to pull that one," Donna snaps. "We're still mates, me and him. I told you so, didn't I, Doctor?"

"Donna," the Doctor sighs, "what's this all about?"

"It's nothing." Donna waves an airy hand. "Just some ceremony, really."

"A ceremony," the Doctor repeats, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "And what – what does that entail?"

"Really, sir, it's quite simple," says the shopkeeper. "As I was explaining to your – to Ms. Noble here, it's meant to test compatibility."

"Compatibility?"

"Yes, sir. The purpose of the bracelets would be defeated otherwise, you see. You may wear them," he holds up a string of red beads before strapping it around his own wrist, "but they wouldn't _mean _anything. There would be no connection."

"Sure." The Doctor nods. "And . . . _what_ are they meant to mean, exactly? Still not totally clear on that, and – well, it's not like we're . . . I don't particularly want to end up. . . ."

"They're friendship bracelets, you dunce!" Donna snags a bracelet, this one a deep purple, and holds it up for his inspection. "What did you think it – oh, you're not still on about the marriage thing, are you?"

"_Well_," the Doctor rubs at the back of his neck, "you might not have known what you were getting into. I know my friend and I – a couple of times we. . . ."

"Yeah, but that's _her_, innit?" says Donna gently. A small, secret smile plays along the edges of her lips.

"Yeah." The Doctor sniffs. "Yeah, it is."

"You and me, we're not like that."

"No," says the Doctor and, with the beginnings of his own smile, "nor are we the type of people who wear friendship bracelets."

"What are you talking about? 'Course we are."

"No." Sticking out his lower lip, the Doctor nibbles at it pensively. "No, we're really not."

"But _look _at them." She shakes the purple beads in front of his face. "Look at them and tell me why not."

"They're bracelets, Donna."

"You're not _looking_."

"I looked. I saw. It's a bracelet. A _friendship _bracelet. Bit . . . feminine, don't you think?"

"So says the man who spends two hours on his hair every morning."

"I do _not _spend . . . time is – I'm a Time Lord, Donna. Time Lords don't wear friendship bracelets."

"Time Lords don't bring twenty-first century humans to the thirty-fifth either, do they? Pretend you didn't hear that," she tosses over her shoulder to the gaping shopkeeper before turning back to the Doctor. "About time to throw out the rule-book, don't you think?"

"It's _purple_."

"So? They have other colors, too. Ooh, look at this one." She holds up a bracelet of deep blue beads this time.

"It'll clash with my suit."

"It's blue. It _matches _your suit."

"What if I decide to wear my brown one?" Bottom lip pooching out still further, the Doctor reined it in before it became a full pout.

"Brown goes with blue."

"No, it doesn't." The Doctor scoffs, muttering half-formed imprecations against the human fashion industry under his breath.

"Yes, it does. Doesn't it?" Donna turns appealingly to the shopkeeper who has been watching them with interest up to this point, but hastily averts his eyes, unwilling to enter into their domestic dispute.

"No, it _doesn't_," he repeats stubbornly.

"You wear your blue trainers with the brown suit all the time!"

"That – they," the Doctor sputters, affronted, "those are my Converse – _completely _different! They're part of my ensemble."

"Really. You use words like _ensemble _and you think wearing a _bracelet _is effeminate?"

"Donna, the Converse are part of who I _am_. Pinstriped suit, great hair, Converse – that's the Doctor. Me. Well, _this _Doctor at any rate. And this Doctor does not wear bracelets – of any kind."

"Well, _this Doctor _had better get used to it." Donna passes over her credit stick to the many-eyed vendor who is tucking what looks like a cross between a Taser and a remote control back beneath the counter. "We're compatible."

**. . .**

"My birthday's coming up, you know."

"Is it?" The Doctor glances up briefly before turning back to his tinkering. The calibration of the gravitational stabilizer is very precise work – one wrong move and they could be bouncing around like the spacemen of Donna's era – and he has no inclination to renew their earlier argument, not when this silent stalemate was so relaxing.

"Yep. May twelfth. Coming up in a couple weeks – I think. Bit hard to keep track of time here, isn't it?"

"Mmm. Anywhere you'd like to go?"

He is already girding himself for the date, he'll take her to a shopping mall or a spa, be her mule for the day, and she will forget all about the vile piece of jewelry sitting in her pocket.

"Not really. Well, to see Mum and Gramps, I suppose."

"Nowhere else?"

"Can't really think of anywhere." She shrugs, shifting to a more comfortable position in the jump seat, face all innocence. It worries him.

"I _would _like a favor, though," she continues when he remains silent.

"No."

"You didn't even know what I was gonna say!"

"Is it sexual?"

"I swear, you've got to be the most cock-sure bloke. . . ."

"It's a valid question! That's a thing with you humans, isn't it? I've . . . well, I've heard of it happening." He shoots her a smug grin. Can't say I blame you, you _are_ traveling with a rather dashing. . . . Careful." Shying away from her swat, the Doctor cradles the stabilizer in one arm. "One wrong move and we could blow sky-high."

"We already _are _sky-high. We're in a spaceship."

"We're in a time-_and_-spaceship," the Doctor reminds her, "and we're in the time vortex, which isn't technically part of the. . . ."

"Stop changing the subject!"

"What subject was that again?" He sticks out his tongue when Donna glares.

"You know right well what, you alien prick."

"Donna," the Doctor sighs, rubbing at his temples, "let's not start this again."

"Give me one good reason."

"I have – a good dozen times, actually."

"_I don't want to _isn't a reason."

"It's _my _reason."

"No," says Donna, "it isn't. That's something a five-year-old says when they don't want to take a nap. And you're a lot older than five, Doctor. You always have better reasons than that - that it's going to wipe out some planet no one's ever heard of or that it'll turn all humans into, I dunno, frogs or something, or that it's just - just _morally _wrong, and that's great. But you can't tell me that putting on one dinky little bracelet is going to destroy the world."

"You can't know that, Donna. Even indirectly, the connection these things forge between us might. . . ."

But it isn't a question of _might _or _if _or any of those other foolishly optimistic terms that dare to hope for the absence of loss. It is a question of _when_. When he will have to meet what is barreling towards him – because it will come, just as it always does, no matter how he tries to stop it – and she will be sucked away from him, into that void of a better life, beyond all hope of retrieval.

"A day, alright? Just try it for a day. If there are any of those side effects . . . well, I'm sure Mum'll ring me if the neighbors turn into tadpoles."

"It isn't as simple as that. . . ."

"And if you're still not comfortable with it after that, then . . . alright. You win. I won't bother you about it anymore."

"Donna. . . ."

"Oh, come _on_. Twenty-four hours? That's nothing to you lot."

"But if something happens. . . ."

"The universe isn't going to implode if you allow yourself to be happy, Doctor."

"You can't know that," he says again, because it bears repeating, because no one can know – even him. He may see what will be, but it is all tangled up in knots with those optimistic _if_s and _might_s and _possibly_s – paths he can't help but follow for a short while, just to see how they end, only to find that that inevitable will be, must be, because there was never any other way after all.

"Yes, I can."

"No," he says, more firmly, "you _can't_."

"Then why are you so certain it will?"

"Because that's what the universe _does_, Donna. It takes and takes and _takes _until you don't have anything left to give." He pauses, breathing hard, and rakes a frustrated hand through his hair. "And then it finds more."

"I'm not going anywhere, Spaceman." Surprised at the proximity of her voice, the Doctor looks up, only to rock back as she pokes him, hard, in the chest. "No. No arguments. I'm your friend, alright? And I'm not going anywhere, no matter what the universe says."

"Don't you say _I can't know that _either." The Doctor receives another jab to the sternum as he opens his mouth to object; he winces, though he hardly feels the sting. "The only person who tells me what to do is me, and I'm staying. And the only person who can tell _you _what to do is me. So," she pulls the bracelet from her pocket, "are going to wear this for twenty-four hours."

The Doctor knows he should refuse, should clamber to his feet and push her away, should flee to one of his myriad workshops and bolt the door behind him. He should do more than just stand here, malleable and mute, as she grasps his hand and slides the thin length of twine onto his wrist – making some offhand remark about _bony aliens _and _paper cuts _as she does so.

Mouth slightly agape, he looks from the bracelet to Donna, then back to the thin band that encircles his right wrist. Frowning, he pulls the sleeve of his suit down over it.

"One day," says Donna. "You can have some ritualistic burning of it after that, for all I care."

"Time Lords don't have. . . ."

"But just give it a day. Twenty-four hours," she repeats, "that's nothing. I bet you even have some metronome in your head that counts down the seconds."

"Nope." He arches an eyebrow, unsurprised when she does the same. "What is it you think Time Lords _are _exactly?"

"I dunno, never met one before, have I? I mean, you _look _human. Guess I just thought you'd be . . . more alien." She almost looks offended, as though he has lied to her in some way.

"More alien," he echoes dryly. "Because every bloke has two hearts and a spaceship that's bigger on the inside."

"Oh, you know! Like green and tentacle-y and _ET phone home_-type stuff."

"A spaceship that travels through time _and _space, Donna. A time-and-space-ship. I'd like to meet the green, tentacle-y ET who has _that_. No. No, no, no – wait, I think I _do _know of a species that – but they aren't _nearly _as clever. Smartest alien in the galaxy, me."

Grasping the edge of the console to steady herself, Donna hops to her feet. "Let's go see them, then. Who knows, maybe I'll swan off with one of them. I can look past green if they're a bit a more built."

"You're not. . . ." The Doctor clears his throat, tugging nervously at one ear. "Not that – I mean, of course you have the right to. . . ."

"Of course not, you dumbo. Didn't we _just _go over this?"

"Ehm. . . ."

"BFFs, remember?" She lifts her wrist, so the bright beads of her bracelet catch the light, sending bright spots dancing across the console room.

"You know," the Doctor grins slyly, pushing buttons and levers at random, as he makes his way towards her, "that'll mean something different in a couple of centuries."

"Really? Wha- oh. You're disgusting."

The Doctor shrugs, waggling his eyebrows. "It's you lot who came up with it. I'm just the messenger."

"God knows what you'd do without me." Still, she allows the Doctor to intertwine his fingers briefly with her own before pulling away.

Both hands free again, the Doctor throws a last lever, pushes a last button – big and red, his favorite – and beams broadly at her as the TARDIS judders to a start. "_Allons-y_, Donna Noble!"

**. . .**

For a race obsessed with rituals, Time Lords do not believe in ceremonial burnings. To that rigidly-structured society, fire embodied not purification, but destruction. The Doctor doesn't know which is more desperate for.

Donna would call him _dumbo _or _space dunce_. Martha would use cold, hard logic. Rose – Rose would take his hand and smile that tongue-touched smile. They would laugh about the silly, melodramatic Time Lord and, as one cohesive unit – his Team TARDIS – disassemble the tottering pile he has gathered and rebuild the world that is falling apart around him.

But the point is moot. If they were here, there would be nothing to fix. He would not have to hear those hollow promises of forever every time he enters a room that any one of them had frequented at any one point in time, would not have to remain, the keeper of a bigger-on-the-inside lost-and-found box – filled with discarded hair elastics and socks missing their mates, powders and lotions long-congealed in their jars, jackets and jeans that will never be worn again – in the full knowledge that no one will return to claim them. Because they can't, because they won't, because he won't let them. They have other lives now – better lives, even if they don't think so – and he doesn't hold it against them.

He has seen centuries of work consumed by flame in mere minutes. A few years should be nothing.

Sparing a last glance back at the mountain of stuff – old T-shirts and dog-eared textbooks, a pair of hot-pink pumps and a moth-eaten teddy bear – the Doctor gives a satisfied nod before tugging roughly at the sleeve of his suit. A bracelet lands atop the pile, joining its' partner buried somewhere in the mess. The shopkeeper was right; they don't mean a thing now.

The Doctor strikes the match. He doesn't look back.

**. . .**

**A/N: **Hope you liked it! This is my first try writing with the Doctor-Donna friendship as the main focus and, as all of the DW stuff I've written prior to this has been Doctor/Rose with some aspect of romance (and Donna would never be romantically interested in the Doctor in a million years), I had a bit of trouble with. Hence why it took so long to upload.

Let me know what you thought in a review!


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